1187 replies to this topic

[Omegamatrix]

And finally, I have saved the best for last tonight. Everything I have shown tonight I got from this one lot save the Asteroid Belt.

http://cgi.ebay.com/...I...72904&fvi=1

Anyhow I was suprised I won the lot. First this V-Case, Treasure Island.

pg]
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Clonespy 100% matches my dumps to the following roms from Rom's master list of roms (as of a July 24th download):

This is my dump:
 Treasure_Island__PAL_.BIN   4K   126 downloads

Treasure Island

- Kampf um die Schatzinsel (1983) (Quelle) (719.163 (PAL)
- Treasure Island (Suntek) (SS-026) (PAL)

I don't think those sunglasses are supposed to be in there, but the software is displaying them. Anyway the title Treasure Island has a link with "Duck Shoot". I know rom has been on search for the roots of this game for a while. I'll let him say what he thinks for connections.

[Omegamatrix]

Finally, what I believe to be the gem of the lot. Actually though I don't know what it is, lol. From my quick research today I found this cart looks like a Rainbow Vision? Suntek? cart (which came first, which came after?) Anyhow you can cleary see the number and name. Note the unique name and shape of the cart. I never held a Suntek or Rainbow Vision cart before so I have nothing to compare it to. Looking at it though it appears single labeled. Lets look at the shell.




My Dump:
 Firebug__PAL_.BIN   4K   157 downloads

Clonespy 100% matches my dumps to the following roms from Rom's master list of roms (as of a July 24th download):


- Spinning Fireball - Fire Spinner - Fireball Spinner (Unknown) (PAL)


Anyhow it is a funny shaped cart. Not like a Taiwan Cooper Black. Anyone else have this cart? I couldn't find nothing close in the Atarimania database and everything after a certain number looked like prototypes. This certainly is not a prototype but I don't know for sure what company made it! A little help here please. The numbers on the back of the shell look like the shell was meant for a multicart.

[Marco]

Hey, what are you doing with all that PAL goodness?! Hand it over to me please  

Cool stuff, this is why I love the PAL realm  

Looks like that Firebug is an official Suntek release (it was know as Fire Spinner before, but apparently that wasn't the real name) - great stuff!

Cheers,
Marco

[Foxsolo2000]

Damn Omega that is quite a catch there.  First time I have seen a Treasure Island and a Fireburg in the flesh.  Congrats on getting them.  Does anyone know if Aimpoint was ever available as a single ender?  I ask as a lot of games on these pirate multicarts have surfaced as carts in their own right

[Omegamatrix]

Foxsolo2000, on Sat Aug 18, 2007 4:21 AM, said:

Damn Omega that is quite a catch there.  First time I have seen a Treasure Island and a Fireburg in the flesh.  Congrats on getting them.  Does anyone know if Aimpoint was ever available as a single ender?  I ask as a lot of games on these pirate multicarts have surfaced as carts in their own right

Fox, I remember you talking about Treasure Island long ago in your topic "Pirates or Originals". It stuck with me as at first it was thought to be a Zellers type cart. The picture in the auction is a little blurry and I thought it was indeed a 2600 Compatible cart as you can only see the end label. In my head I imagined it would look like the Inca Gold label, and that would finally make sense for the picture (this label has been used for many pirate titles though). I was surprised to get the V-Case, and that the label is unlike the rest of the 2600 Compatibles I have seen. I have seen this label before, but I have to research the company as I can't remember.

[Foxsolo2000]

Omegamatrix, on Sat Aug 18, 2007 11:19 PM, said:

Foxsolo2000, on Sat Aug 18, 2007 4:21 AM, said:

Damn Omega that is quite a catch there.  First time I have seen a Treasure Island and a Fireburg in the flesh.  Congrats on getting them.  Does anyone know if Aimpoint was ever available as a single ender?  I ask as a lot of games on these pirate multicarts have surfaced as carts in their own right

Fox, I remember you talking about Treasure Island long ago in your topic "Pirates or Originals". It stuck with me as at first it was thought to be a Zellers type cart. The picture in the auction is a little blurry and I thought it was indeed a 2600 Compatible cart as you can only see the end label. In my head I imagined it would look like the Inca Gold label, and that would finally make sense for the picture (this label has been used for many pirate titles though). I was surprised to get the V-Case, and that the label is unlike the rest of the 2600 Compatibles I have seen. I have seen this label before, but I have to research the company as I can't remember.

Yes talking was as far as it got.  I had never seen a copy of the cart until you produced it and it was only down to Pipster comming forward and confirming that it was Duck Shoot that I knew what game it was.  I envy you on your find.  Well done

[Rom Hunter]

First of all: congratulations with this excellent find.

I've added most of it to our database now.

About my collection:

I'm updating it almost every day (adding new ROMS, missing info, correcting and polishing stuff, etc.).
A new version of my collection will go online by the end of the year, replacing the old version.
Although it comes with a list of changes and additions, some of the changes are very difficult to track down.
The best thing to do would be to completely replace my old collection with the newest version and leave your own added ROMS in another map.


About the carts:

Astro War being Space Jockey surprises me.
I only know it as Astrowar from Dimax/Sinmax.

I really doubt that your Firebug is a genuine Suntek cartridge, because it has a different cartridge and label design and the ROM inside differs from the original ROM inside the SS-028 Suntek proto Jens found.

However, it does show the SS-028 model number and ofcourse the title (which could very well be the original Suntek title).

I will add your scan to the Suntek section (because of the SS-0xx model number) together with a note.

Your Treasure Island is also very interesting, because it confirms the link to the SS-026 Suntek game (which most probably carried the same name).

This 4 in 1 has exactly the same label, btw:
http://atarimania.co...ERSION_ID=17531

Duck Shoot is a name that only exists as a Stella.pro filename (and perhaps as a multi-cart title too), but I still haven't seen it in cartridge form.

According to Stella.pro it's the same game as Treasure Island.

Edited by Rom Hunter, Sun Aug 19, 2007 8:57 AM.

[A.J. Franzman]

Omegamatrix, on Fri Aug 17, 2007 11:59 PM, said:

- Kampf um die Schatzinsel (1983) (Quelle) (719.163 (PAL)
- Treasure Island (Suntek) (SS-026) (PAL)

I don't think those sunglasses are supposed to be in there, but the software is displaying them.

The BB code for the sunglasses emoticon is "8" followed by ")". If you want to show those two characters rather than the icon, either uncheck the "Enable emoticons?" box below the post when you're entering/editing it, or put a space between them.

[Omegamatrix]

Today we are going to look at the following games:



Decathlon (NTSC) White
Vulture Attack (NTSC) aka Condor Attack
UFO Patrol (PAL) aka X'Mission, Raumpatrouille
UFI und sein gefährlicher Einsatz (PAL) aka Go Go Home Monster, Alien's Return, etc...
Plant Patrol (PAL) aka Tac-Scan (NTSC) I think this name comes from a miss spelling of Planet Patrol
Motor Cross (PAL) V-Case (end is snapped off so it appears short)
Tank City (PAL) aka Thunderground (NTSC)



First the 100% matches to Rom's roms as of 01/01/08 according to Clonespy:

Vulture Attack.bin (Omegamatrix dump)
Vulture Attack (AKA Condor Attack) (1982) (K-Tel Vision).bin
Condor Attack (1982) (Ultravision) (1043).bin
Condor Attack (1983) (CCE) (C-851).bin

UFI und sein gefahrlicher Einsatz.bin (Omegamatrix dump)
Alien's Return (AKA Go Go Home Monster) (1983) (ITT Family Games) (554-33 391) (PAL).bin
Go Go Home Monster (1983) (Home Vision - Gem Int'l Corp.) (PAL).bin

Ufo Patrol.bin (Omegamatrix dump)
UFO Patrol (AKA X'Mission) (Suntek) (SS-031) (PAL).bin
Raumpatrouille (AKA X'Mission) (1983) (Quelle) (731.064 2) (PAL).bin

Plant Patrol.bin (Omegamatrix dump)
Tac-Scan (Unknown) (PAL).bin

Motor Cross (V-case).bin (Omegamatrix dump)
Motocross - Motorcross - Motocross (1983) (Quelle) (719.383 2 - 649635 - 781393) (PAL).bin

Tank City.bin (Omegamatrix dump)
Thunderground (Unknown) (PAL).bin

So they have all been dumped before except the Decathlon. When Decathlon was released it had a famous "pole vault glitch":

http://www.atariage....mp;hl=decathlon

Now the white label is a very late release version so I am presuming this is the "fixed" version of the game. If you read the thread in the above link you'll see Activision switched at some point to the fixed version. I need a good game player to test this rom and confirm that this is the difference. Please note that Z26 won't open this properly until you force it to FE bankswitching (-g5 switch from the command prompt), but Stella seemed to recognize it as FE bankswitching right away.

 Activision_Decathlon__The__NTSC__white.BIN   8K   173 downloads

HOM3 notes that 79 bytes are different. Now I am no disassembler (let alone a FE disassembler) so I will leave a text of the compare file here and the rom I compared it to. The reason I point out disassembly is because I believe the hex addresses are different from HOM3 to Distella, but don't quote me on that. Disassembly is more the domain of Nukey, and I'm hoping either Nukey or Thomas will take a look at these two roms to see what the difference is.

 Activision_Decathlon__The__NTSC__FE_bankswitching.txt   1.07K   85 downloads
 Activision_Decathlon__The__1983___Activision__David_Crane___AG_930_04__AZ_030_.bin   8K   165 downloads

Big, huge thanks to Cpuwiz who helped me get my dumper working again, and to Eckhard for his modified software to dump FE bankswitching games and especially the continued help and support when I get stumped. Without these guys none of this would have happened.  

[Rom Hunter]

I'm not too happy with that Decathlon ROM

It doesn't work immediately on an emulator.

Is it really the fixed (non bugged polevault) version, btw?

[Omegamatrix]

Rom Hunter, on Sat Jan 12, 2008 9:17 AM, said:

I'm not too happy with that Decathlon ROM

It doesn't work immediately on an emulator.

Is it really the fixed (non bugged polevault) version, btw?

Stella auto detects it as FE bankswitching and plays it right away. Try it you'll see. While it is playing in Stella hit the tab button, then click on game properites and change the auto detect to a different 8K format, say F8 (Atari 8K). Now escape out of the game and reload it. You will get a pile of goo. In fact you will find that this dump only works under FE bankswitching. I think Stella's auto detection is very good.

With Z26 I'm guessing you have to add what type of bankswitching some specific games use to Z26. Eckhard said earlier in this thread something like the reason PAL Springer didn't work in Z26 was because they didn't have the rom for reference. Remember PAL Springer does work in Z26 when it manually forced to 3F bankswitching, but it fires up in Stella right away. Again Stella's auto detection works really well. I also tested PAL Springer on real hardware with my Krok cart and it worked just fine.

The Krok does not support FE bankswitching so I have no way to test this dump on real hardware. Someone with a Cuttle Cart 2 could. I'm not sure if they have to do anything specific when they use the Cuttle Cart 2. All I know is that FE bankswitching is written on Schell's site as being supported by the Cuttle Cart 2.


- I'm curious to know how Z26's auto detection works. Eckhard?

- I'm also curious if any good gamer has tried this to see if the pole vault glitch is fixed.

Edited by Omegamatrix, Sat Jan 12, 2008 7:44 PM.

[Omegamatrix]

Okay I just played both roms and it is the fixed version. it's much harder to pole vault in this and I couldn't clear 3.0 meters.   On the old version you just hit the fire button and you sort of keep on gliding up. I was able to get 5.2 meters easily. I thought you would have to go through all the events to get to the pole vault. I really wasn't looking forward to trying to get through that 1500m dash again (oh my sore wrists) so I didn't want to do it. Then I found you can do each one individually.


This rom checks out Rom. It is the real deal. Try it in Stella and you will see.

[Rom Hunter]

Omegamatrix, on Sat Jan 12, 2008 11:21 PM, said:

This rom checks out Rom. It is the real deal. Try it in Stella and you will see.

You're right.

It works.

Just like Springer (PAL)

Did you dump any other ROMs that only work on Stella?

[Eckhard Stolberg]

Omegamatrix, on Sun Jan 13, 2008 12:05 AM, said:

- I'm curious to know how Z26's auto detection works. Eckhard?

There isn't really an auto detection for bankswitching types in z26. We calculate a checksum over the ROM image which we then use to identify the games that need special settings for the bankswitching or the controller. So unless we release a new z26 executable with updated checksums you'll have to start z26 from the command line prompt and force the bankswitching setting manually. (z26 -g5 Activision_Decathlon__The__NTSC__white.BIN for the new Decathlon binary).

Stella used to use a similar aproach in older versions, but for the current version Stephen added a routine that scans the ROM image for small code pieces that are usually used to trigger a bankswitch. This seems to work astonishingly well.


Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

[Omegamatrix]

Thank you Eckhard. That explains why these roms didn't start until forced in Z26. Any chance Z26 will ever have auto detection like Stella or would that be basically like writing a whole new emulator?

[SeaGtGruff]

Omegamatrix, on Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:08 PM, said:

Any chance Z26 will ever have auto detection like Stella or would that be basically like writing a whole new emulator?

Z26 already has auto-detection, but it must not be as extensive as Stella's. Maybe we ought to see if we can figure out the formats that Z26 has trouble auto-detecting, and get a list together? Then maybe someone could try to update it? And if it's possible, maybe someone could even add any newer bankswitching methods that Z26 doesn't emulate yet?

Michael

[Rom Hunter]

Would indeed be great, Michael.

[Mayhem]

Actually I like the fact you can pick PAL or NTSC before booting in Z26, you can see how a ROM designed for one system acts on the other.

[Eckhard Stolberg]

SeaGtGruff, on Mon Jan 14, 2008 8:17 AM, said:

Omegamatrix, on Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:08 PM, said:

Any chance Z26 will ever have auto detection like Stella or would that be basically like writing a whole new emulator?

Z26 already has auto-detection, but it must not be as extensive as Stella's. Maybe we ought to see if we can figure out the formats that Z26 has trouble auto-detecting, and get a list together? Then maybe someone could try to update it? And if it's possible, maybe someone could even add any newer bankswitching methods that Z26 doesn't emulate yet?

z26 doesn't auto-detect the bankswitching types. We only have a default bankswitching type for all given ROM image sizes. Games that use a different format than the default for their ROM size need to be detected on a ROM by ROM basis. If someone was so kind to send me all the ROMs released in the last 4 years which need to be detected for their bankswitching type or their controller, I could easily add their checksums to z26 and make a new official release.

I haven't looked too closely at the bankswitching detection routine in Stella, but I suppose it would be pretty easy to adapt it for z26, if there was some demand to do so.

As for new bankswitching formats: We have the same problem as Stella. Most new formats would be easy to add, but we'd need a ROM image to test the new bankswitching routine with. So, if you have written a game with a new bankswitching format which you'd like to see supported in z26, all you have to do is to send me a copy of the ROM image for the game. And I'm sure Stephen would like a copy too, so he could update Stella as well.  


Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

[Hornpipe2]

Do you plan to name ROMs descriptively?  E.g. Astroblast (Paddle) (1982) (M Network, Hal Finney) (MT5666) [a].bin is an older buggy version of Astroblast and Astroblast (Paddle) (1982) (M Network, Hal Finney) (MT5666).bin is the 'fixed' one.  Would you want to include an explanation on the differences in ROMs or simply leave them as [a]?

[Rom Hunter]

Omegamatrix did an excellent job in finding and explaining the differences between similar looking ROMs.

As you can see in my collection, these ROMs have a text addition instead of just an [a] addition.

For example: Asteroids No Copyright, Decathlon Fixed, Dodge 'Em Fixed, etc.

There are more double released versions from the Old Era, but the only problem is: we don't know which one is the fixed version.

[Rom Hunter]

Other cases:

Is the first production ROM of Air Raiders (Air Battle) ever dumped?

Also, what about the fixed versions of:

Astroblast
Bridge
BurgerTime
Ghostbusters (PAL)
Millipede
Skeet Shoot (PAL)

Edited by Rom Hunter, Mon Jan 21, 2008 4:31 AM.

[Omegamatrix]

I've dumped about six Air Raiders (3 white, 3 black) over the last few months looking for an alternate rom, but haven't found one yet. Al dumped the fixed version of Missile Command a while back.

 MissileCommand_NoInitials.bin   4K   176 downloads

http://www.atariage....s...t&p=1402733

I remember thinking this didn't exist. One day I dumped about a dozen Missile Commands including a '86 and a Sears Pic trying to find one with no luck. But indeed it does!  

[SeaGtGruff]

Rom Hunter, on Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:53 PM, said:

Also, what about the fixed versions of:

Millipede

Huh? Was a "fixed" version of 2600 Millipede released? What's different between it and the original release? This is one of my all-time favorite 2600 games-- and I usually prefer adventure games to shooters! Is the "fixed" version the one that was included on the Flashback 2? I have the original cartridge release, but I also have a Flashback 2-- as well as the CD with 80 Atari games for PC, which also includes Millipede.

Michael

[Rom Hunter]

Omegamatrix, on Sun Jan 20, 2008 6:18 PM, said:

I've dumped about six Air Raiders (3 white, 3 black) over the last few months looking for an alternate rom, but haven't found one yet.

I think you're barking up the wrong tree:
http://www.atarimani...ERSION_ID=19390

Tempest, do you own this ROM?


Michael,

The 1987 Gray Label Millipede seems to have some incompatibility problems with the original 6-switcher and certain 7800 systems.
The game will hang up when you completed the bonus stage after level 3.

So it's not a fixed version at all, but historically an interesting ROM to have.

Edited by Rom Hunter, Mon Jan 21, 2008 12:18 PM.